August 09, 2017

In Rajasthan, Savarkar is the new
hero of history textbooks that give short shrift to Gandhi and Nehru and
the movements they led during the country’s struggle for freedom. By
ZIYA US SALAM

THE much-anticipated “achche din” may have
proved illusory for the common man, but they have certainly arrived,
albeit posthumously, for Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the original purveyor
of Hindutva. Not only has he stolen a march over Rashtriya Swayamsewak
Sangh (RSS) ideologues like M.S. Golwalkar and his guru K.B. Hedgewar,
he is even marginalising the Father of the Nation.
History
textbooks are being revised to impart a retrospective halo around
Savarkar, the man who played a limited role in the national freedom
struggle in the first decade of the 20th century. He was an atheist
then. Later, when he donned the Hindutva cloak, he became a British
loyalist. In a classic case of a molehill being transformed into a
mountain, Savarkar now has pride of place in Rajasthan school history
textbooks. Ignored are his numerous apologies to the British, his
promise to work for the perpetuation of British rule, and so on.
His
anti-Muslim stance seems to make up for all his sins of omission and
collusion. Even his stand on the cow—remarkably, he did not consider the
cow to be the mother of all Hindus or sacred—is no dampener in times
when the lynching of innocent people in the name of gau raksha is commonplace.
The
Rajasthan government in particular has stepped up its pace of rewriting
history. Without any noise, Mahatma Gandhi is being marginalised in
books meant for school students. Jawaharlal Nehru, too, predictably, is
fading away. In their place come the likes of Savarkar, Hedgewar, Deen
Dayal Upadhyay and religious leaders like Vivekananda and Aurobindo. The
Rajasthan government has introduced textbooks for students of class
VIII onwards that often belittle the contribution of Gandhi and Nehru to
the freedom struggle and eulogise Savarkar’s contribution.
In a class X textbook,
Savarkar is hailed as a great revolutionary whose “lifelong sacrifices…
for the country's independence is beyond words”. A chapter on the Civil
Disobedience and Quit India movements consigns Mahatma Gandhi to the
sidelines. Whereas these movements, along with the Non-Cooperation
movement, were earlier dealt with at length in the curriculam for senior
secondary school students, they now get a fleeting mention. Gandhi’s
role in them is downplayed, while Nehru’s role is completely omitted. He
does get mention as one of the torchbearers of the freedom struggle,
but he is put on a par with Deen Dayal Upadhyay, whose role in the
freedom movement was not worth a mention. Nehru’s vision of the
Non-Aligned Movement is completely ignored. The Congress’ politics of
inclusion as opposed to the politics of exclusion practised by the
Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha is also ignored. Savarkar is
elevated to the level of a great leader on a par with Gandhi, Sardar
Vallabhbhai Patel and B.R. Ambedkar. No mention is made of Nathuram
Godse’s role in Gandhi’s assassination or of Savarkar’s possible link
with it.
All this should not come as a surprise, given Savarkar’s
track record. As a 12-year-old boy, he is said to have led a march of
his classmates to stone a mosque after rumours of cow slaughter gained
currency. This was his “revenge” against the “atrocities” committed
against Hindus during Hindu-Muslim riots.
As noted by Jyotirmaya Sharma in Hindutva: Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism,
“Savarkar’s own account of this act speaks of his rage against the
deeds of physical violence committed against the Hindus by Muslim
rioters. (For him, it was always the Muslims who initiated a riot.) So,
when Hindus killed Muslims in acts of retribution, Savarkar and his
friends would dance with joy.”
If Savarkar stoned a mosque as a
boy, it is almost in the fitness of things that today he is being
resurrected in school textbooks by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),
which has in its ranks men and women who watched or abetted the
demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. Not many would have forgotten
Union Minister Uma Bharti’s infamous line, “Ek dhakka aur do”
(give it one more push), as she sat watching the Babri Masjid being
demolished by kar sevaks. Today, temples of learning are being tampered
with.
Interestingly, the whole attempt to find a place for
Hindutva heroes centres around Savarkar. Luminaries like Hedgewar and
Golwalkar are not so much in the limelight yet.
The apparent anomaly is explained by Professor Aditya Mukherjee, who co-authored RSS, School Texts and The Murder of Mahatma Gandhi: The Hindu Communal Project,
with Mridula Mukherjee and Sucheta Mahajan: “Savarkar was the original
ideologue of Hindutva. Golwalkar and others borrowed the idea from him.
He was the one who gave the idea of pitrabhoomi and punyabhoomi whereby only a person whose birth-land and sacred land happened to be here could claim to be Indian.”
Rizwan
Qaiser, who teaches history at Jamia Millia Islamia, said: “If you see a
long-term trajectory, they have picked up distinctive figures. Some
people like Hedgewar were not as well promoted, but Savarkar is
highlighted. He was more articulate than others. The halo around him was
not seen with Golwalkar or Hedgewar. The very fact that he was sent to
the Andamans is enough to raise people’s hackles if you question him in
Maharashtra. He is seen there as ‘veer’, somebody willing to sacrifice.
His cell is projected as a site of pilgrimage. They tried to project
Deen Dayal Upadhyay, too, but it was like deadwood. It did not work.
Savarkar remains their most easily identifiable icon. This despite his
association with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.”
Savarkar
was sent to the Andamans for supplying a pistol to members of the
Abhinav Bharat Society. It took him just a month to send his first mercy
petition. In his subsequent petitions, he even claimed that his fellow
prisoners were given certain privileges that were denied him. The
British refused to be swayed. Soon, he even called himself a “prodigal
son”.
He wrote: “The mighty alone can afford to be merciful and
therefore where else can the prodigal son return but to the paternal
doors of the government.” The mighty did relent in 1924 when he was
finally released. Before that Savarkar had cried for mercy a few more
times. He promised to be “the staunchest advocate of loyalty to the
English government”.
Now Savarkar is being hailed as a great
patriot who sacrificed much for the freedom of the country. Qaiser said
this was a “travesty”: “Often an image outlives a man. This image of
Savarkar has been assiduously cultivated. It has to be countered.” He
added: “Savarkar opposed the British in Bombay in 1909, for which he was
subsequently sent to the Andamans. His apology letters from there are
well known, how he pledged to work for furtherance of the British rule
if clemency was shown to him. Interestingly, in all the photographs
around the Andamans, while all other prisoners are shown in prison
uniform and in shackles, Savarkar is seen wearing a Konkani suit. This
is intriguing.”
Back in 1906, before setting sail for England, he
founded the Free India Society to organise Indian students to fight for
independence. He wanted laws to be changed by the British not just to
include more Indians in the legislature but also give them the right to
frame the laws. That was in the early years of his student and public
life before he became a votary of Hindutva.
Interestingly,
Savarkar worked actively to enrol Indians in the Army to perpetuate
British rule. The Quit India movement had the tacit support of almost
all leaders except Savarkar. two-nation theoryNot
only did Savarkar work to help India’s colonial masters, he was the
first to moot the concept of two states. “Savarkar was the first to coin
the mantra for two different states, one for Hindus, another for
Muslims, the idea being the two communities are incompatible. In many
ways, with his demand for a Hindu Rashtra in 1923, he paved the way for
M.A. Jinnah’s demand in 1938,” said Qaiser, adding: “Jinnah in 1928
attended an all-party conference in Kolkata. There was no call for a
separate state of Pakistan. The call for Pakistan came a decade later.”
Mukherjee chipped in: “He and Jinnah represent two ends of the same ideology.”
Giving
space to Savarkar in textbooks is probably inevitable for a government
driven by Hindutva ideology. However, why do it at the cost of the
Father of the Nation? “That is because he [Gandhi] was the foremost and
the most visible opponent of Hindutva. He was a practising Hindu yet
opposed Hindutva. He was not a communalist. He had to be killed. Today,
they are wiping out his name from books,” Mukherjee said.
“The RSS
is deeply uncomfortable with a figure like Gandhi. He cannot be
dismissed as ‘pseudo-secular’ or a leftist. He represents someone who is
a Hindu believer and yet organically against communalism. His Hinduism
is very different from Savarkar’s Hindutva. He also represents a strong
belief in non-violence. Both these positions are not in sync with the
current dispensation, and hence a marginalisation of Gandhi,” stated
Charu Gupta, an associate professor of history at Delhi University.
There is an oft-repeated allegation that in the history written by
Leftist historians Hindutva icons were not given space. Mukherjee said:
“How can anybody give due to apologists? To people who sent
God-knows-how-many mercy petitions to the British for clemency. He
claimed he never did any politics, just like the RSS claims it is a
cultural organisation. Who is to believe that? It is pertinent to
remember that upon his release he [Savarkar] became the president of the
Hindu Mahasabha.”
In one of his mercy petitions, Savarkar had
said: “I and my brother are perfectly willing to give a pledge of not
participating in politics for a definite and reasonable period, that the
Government would indicate...”
Notwithstanding the current
glorification of Savarkar, Qaiser is not pessimistic: “As a student of
history, I would say they will not succeed. It is not like you write
something and it becomes history. This regime is not forever. The truth
has to come out. They may rewrite textbooks for kids which is dangerous
considering students are at an impressionable age, but what about the 72
collected works of Gandhi? What will happen to that? People know it
across the world. It is an ideological battle. There are great pitfalls.
More so when you consider young minds are being poisoned from day one,
but it is a war that we will eventually win. We have to.”
“We
are living in paradoxical times,” Mukherjee said. It is pertinent to
recall what he has written in his book: “Let us not forget that.... the
writers of hate textbooks make it possible for the Modis and the
Togadias to successfully mobilise fascist mobs who revel in pulling down
places of worship or dismembering women and children.” A note of
warning the Rajasthan government would do well to heed.

Map of L K Advani's Rath Yatra of 1990

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